Tea is Served

Earlier this week, my friend MN came over for a tea visit. Our place isn't exactly together yet, but presentable enough. I made a pear-almond upside down cake, some tea sandwiches, a little salad, and tea, of course! And I had wee tea ready for our little ones as well. It wasn't exactly easy to eat in peace with the little monkeys dangling from us, but we had a really nice time. Tea is so fun. (The upside down cake recipe is in Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone, in case you're interested. I didn't fan the pears right, but it was sooo delicious.)

Bright Bits of London

The weather here is mostly just grey, so I've had my eye on some bright bits in our new neighborhood (today, though, was quite a nice sunny day). These pictures are from things on or near Portobello Road that I took either last weekend or a few before.

Fox trot on Portobello Road, the iconic colorful houses on Portobello, a record art installation, a bright pink house, a store I like that's covered in bows, a bright door, and some more colorful houses. 

Progress

Hi Lois! There she is in our new place before we crammed in all our stuff. I've been unpacking like mad since we got here because I hate being surrounded by boxes, and I'm excited to be here. Though this flat itself wouldn't be our top pick, we do like a lot of things about it, and we love the neighborhood (northwest London). We have a third bedroom, sort of anyway--it's more of a storeroom and it has its own entrance, but it does have wood floors and heat, so I'm planning to make it into an office / guest bedroom if everything can fit. We have part of the living room together now. That's one wall that's pretty much done, but I have to work on the rest of the room. If we paint the walls, it will be a while before we do that, so I went ahead and hung things. I'm a little tired of some of our stuff and would like to get a pick-up truck and go hunting for new junk, but in the meantime, here's the usual in a new-ish configuration. Hi again Lois! Cookies make her happy :)

And here's the 3rd room. Gotta get working on that mess. 

Roses, Rugs and Such

Well, we've moved! Now we're unpacking. Wow, it's amazing how your stuff seems to expand when it's in boxes--looks that way anyway by the amount of boxes. Yesterday I took lois for a Valentine cupcake at Hummingbird Bakery. She loved it. It was quite tasty. The roses above were for me from the hubbers. I picked them out :) I love the red, pink and coral-ish orange-yellow together. (Both of those pictures are with the iPhone photo app, Instagram, which I'm really liking.) We also strolled over to a shop on Portobello Road to look at rugs. I found this one below (not a great picture, sorry about that). The guy there quoted me one price, which was good, I thought, so I called the hubbers who ok'd it and went back in to buy it. The shop man as concerned that he gave me the wrong price, so he made a phone call and told me double what he said before, ah, drat! I was not a happy camper. He felt very bad, though, and said he'd see what he could do and give me a call. We shall see. I do love the colors and design. I don't think it's Moroccan, but I really like it a lot. So that's what we've been up to. We don't have internet access at our house yet, so I might not be updating here much for the next few days, but our new little place is coming along quickly and I'll post some pictures soon. 

Moroccan Rugs

The jury is still out on the paint color, but the new landlord did say we could paint if we want to, which is great! The only thing is, the ceilings are fairly low (well, they're not especially low, but not really high either). I think the whole place, including the ceilings, would need to be painted in order for it to look its best painted, otherwise I'm afraid with only the walls painted it might look choppy and give the illusion of a shorter ceiling height. This is just my assumption based on nothing really. I should read about room size perception to see if that's true. So we talked about it and plan to leave the walls white for now. I'll keep the paint in mind though, but right now I've moved on to rugs. We have the Tarnby rugs from Ikea in our current place, which I like a lot, but I think I'm ready for something different, something more colorful. And my other half would like something softer. The Tarnby rugs are a bit coarse. I love the top image here and have it in my mind as my inspiration. I saw a great Moroccan rug in a shop on Portobello Road recently, but it was snatched up right in front of me by Alice Temperley. I didn't know who she was, but I was with my friend MN and she knew who it was right away. I had sold envy for sure! Right after she scooped it up, I just knew I should have bought it. I'll be on the lookout for another one. 

Sources for the images are in my pinterest.